Very Nice

April 1, 2019
Five narrators play a game of narrative hot potato with a tale of summer sexcapades. Rachel Klein is a student at "that overrated liberal arts school on the Hudson." As the novel opens, she offers to dogsit for her creative writing professor, Zahid Azzam--"the name of either a superhero or terrorist"--while he goes home to Pakistan. Then they have sex. Meanwhile, up in glorious bougie Connecticut, Rachel's father, Jonathan, has left her mother, Becca, and Becca's beloved poodle has died. So when Rachel shows up for the summer with a nearly identical poodle and in a few weeks the dog is followed by its owner, the supersexy, famous Pakistani writer--well, Becca is in a vulnerable position to say the least. Dermansky (The Red Car, 2016, etc.) gives each of the Kleins and Zahid a turn at being the narrator and throws in one more--a lesbian financial analyst named Khloe who is subletting Zahid's apartment in Brooklyn. Khloe's interior monologue contains lines like these: "Honestly, this kind of shit did not happen to me. I was tall and biracial and sexy." Khloe's twin sister is a writer named Kristi who has stolen Khloe's childhood secrets for her own award-winning first novel, nominated of course by Zahid. Now maybe Kristi can help him get a job at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she teaches, prying him out of his very long lost weekend in Connecticut. There are many funny writer jokes in this book, among them the commentary on Rachel's parents' marriage provided by her short stories; in a way the whole book is a writer joke. All the characters sound the same--like Dermansky, except with more or less profanity--and that seems to be intentional. "We appreciate short sentences," says Rachel's mom, speaking for all of them, really. Dermansky has won herself a cadre of devoted fans, especially among other writers. This may not be the best thing she's ever written--it doesn't have the sneaky profundity of The Red Car--but it's a hell of a lot of stylish fun. Can you top this? is the question posed by each chapter of this upmarket soap opera, and the answer is always yes.

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Starred review from May 20, 2019
The sly, deceptively simple and thoroughly seductive fourth novel by the author of The Red Car keeps a small cast of weirdly interrelated characters in constant motion. In the first few pages, as the academic year ends, clueless, dreamy college student Rachel seduces her passively willing creative writing professor, Zahid Azzam, whose stint at her liberal arts college has just ended. He proceeds to hand off his standard poodle, Princess, to Rachel while he returns to Pakistan to visit his dying grandmother, and Rachel takes Princess to her childhood home in a wealthy Connecticut suburb, where her mom, Becca—adrift after her own poodle has died and her husband, Jonathan, has left her for airline pilot Mandy—falls in love with the dog. When Zahid returns to pick up Princess, he falls for Becca and her poolside lifestyle, and drifts through the summer with her, while Rachel, ignorant of the affair, keeps trying to lure him into her bed. Intersecting their lives are twins Khloe, who works with Jonathan, and Kristi, a writer who offers a job at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to the reluctant Zahid. When conflict between mother and daughter reaches a head, Zahid is caught in the middle and faces an eviction from the edenic existence he has been savoring. Bouncing between points of view, Dermansky confines herself to snappy, brisk paragraphs and short sentences, with much of the psychic action between the lines. Her sharp satire spares none of the characters and teeters brilliantly on the edge of comedy and tragedy.

Starred review from June 1, 2019

Nineteen-year-old Rachel Klein puts the moves on her writing professor, Zahid Azzam, and then looks after his poodle, Princess, when he travels to Pakistan to visit his dying granny. This end-of-term hook-up opens Dermansky's fourth novel (after The Red Car), but plenty more follows as Rachel's recently divorced mother, Becca, takes up with Zahid. Mismatched lovers and bad decisions lead to excruciating moments, and these engulf Rachel's father and lover as well as Zahid's colleagues, twin sisters Khloe and Kristi. The action lasts one month and takes place mostly in Manhattan and in a wealthy part of Connecticut. While the genre is comedy of manners, the book comments on nearly every domestic issue of our times, usually with a skewer at the ready. Though written for adults, this tale could vie for YALSA's Alex Awards: it's knowing, articulate, funny, audacious, and attuned to Twitterati attention spans. The characters star in alternating chapters, and their inner thoughts and dialog propel compulsive reading to the bloody end. VERDICT Powerful themes of mother love and daughter fidelity give this frothy novel a depth that lingers after the rush of enjoyment. [See Prepub Alert, 1/7/19.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2019
The latest novel from critically acclaimed author Dermansky (The Red Car, 2016) unfolds through a series of interconnected vignettes that navigate the shocking and banal parts of her disparate characters' lives. Set mostly in and around New York City, it explores such themes as identity, sexuality, the paralyzing nature of fear, the fraught nature of relationships, and the secrets that people keep. Dermansky imbues her characters with the type of depth and distinct personalities that rise above facile portrayals. Narration is in the first person and the reader, who is invited to see through the eyes of every major character, gains insight into the truths and deceptions in what characters tell each other and themselves. Dermansky's spare prose compels the reader in such an effortless way that the monumental revelations her characters nonchalantly make have an even greater impact. As a study on human nature, this novel can easily hold its own amongst literary works, but will likely also be well-received by general fiction lovers looking for a more substantial, yet still entertaining, book to read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)